At Mapuche land takeover near Curacautín, Araucanía Region, Chile. Photo: Petermann
Over 23-30 November, Global Justice Ecology Project and Biofuelwatch filmed this series of short statements opposing neoliberal market-based climate schemes and so-called “green energies” that enable business as usual at the expense of the peoples, rivers, forests and ecosystems of Chile.
While in Chile at the Cumbre de los Pueblos, we also spoke about the threats from genetically engineered trees and their role in advancing these market-based false solutions. GJEP has teamed up with Mapuche people against GE trees in Chile since 2004.
About the video: Chile was to be the host of the COP25 Climate Summit. But in the face of a massive popular uprising against the free market neoliberal economic model, and hundreds of cases of human rights abuses, Chile canceled the COP. The COP moved to Spain, yet Chile retained Presidency of the COP.
Chile, meanwhile, remains a striking example of the impacts of “natural climate solutions” – the carbon market, carbon offsets and large-scale “green” energy. In Chile, these schemes have led to vast tree plantations, destroyed forests, led to forced displacements, loss of fresh water, toxic incinerators and huge devastating copper and lithium mines.
Through the following statements, many of them made at two Mapuche occupations of ancestral lands, Chile offers a warning to the world about the dangers of “natural climate solutions” being promoted at the COP.